Definitely gotta thow the Green Mountain Europas into the group (about $750-$800 street). Has bested ML floorstanding stats, Revel m20, Quad 12L, Vandersteen, Paradigm 100, and Meadowlark to name a few. Compared crystal clarity like the Maggies (time/phase coherent, first-order crossover):
Enter "Europa" and/or "Europas" in SEARCH box:...........
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl For more info.,Roy Johnson can be emailed at: gma@pcisys.net
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Here's some info. that was given to me:.............
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The Europa Specs: All cast marble- 45lbs ea.
8 x 10.25"d x 18.5" high.
Flares out 2 degrees each side,
Leans back 6 degrees- only 8.25"d at top.
$880/pr retail with the latest crossover parts (was $780 list)
Goes on stands 24-28" for couch-height listener.
On 36-38" stands for 4 foot-away nearfield listener in an office chair (studio monitoring-nearfield).
Works fine on a (sturdy) bookshelf or breakfront.
Uses the newer version of the Continuum 0.5's 6" woofer. Ported on the front panel.
Morel tweeter with Sonicap premium capacitor and Audio Magic wire,
AuraSound neodymium-magnet woofer, with Solen Litz-wire inductor and Audio Magic wire.
Vampire wire brass/silver/gold binding posts.
1st-order x-over at 2850Hz
+/- 0.75dB from 55Hz to 20kHz, -3dB at 47 Hz freefield
105dB peak SPL, midband at 2 meters
Will fill a LARGE room if 150W/ch (8 Ohm rating) power is avail.
88-89dB sensitivity
This is a 4 Ohm speaker, rising an Ohm higher in the tweeter's range.
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Green Mountain Story (their advertised info--copied from another site)
We typically build several hundred speakers total per year- obviously not a threat to the big boys. However, we maintain several advantages- in experience and skill, in customer service, and also in the talents of Roy Johnson, our product designer.
He brings the skills of a physicist, a recording and pro-sound engineer, master cabinetmaker and moldmaker. He is experienced in high-vacuum, high-temp, and cryogenics processes, aero, hydro and thermo dynamics, optical system design and was a glassblower. He reads music, plays piano, synthesizers and harmonica, but can't sing ever since his voice changed (a blessing for sure). When he was 19, Roy began work for Hewlett/Packard here in town, building oscilloscope tubes (one machine purchased from RCA in the early 1960's had made most of RCA's famous vacuum tubes).
He left H/P after a few years to work for audio stores, and then created a local chain of hi-end stores. He moved into audio manufacturing (working for others) for a few years, then into pro-sound and recording. One gig was recording our symphony for several years in the Pikes Peak Center. This is one of the top ten acoustic environments in the US- it still attracts famous artists and guest conductors.
All the while, Roy was experimenting with speaker designs, studying not only the competition he was selling and installing, but the large body of research published on sound and perception since the 1600's.
In 1986, he returned to university for physics studies, teaching undergraduate Physics courses while in graduate school. He also designed and installed very large "foreground" multi-kilowatt sound systems several times a year for a chain of billiards parlors who needed LOUD ultra-hi fi sound. During that period, he designed a unique hydrodyamic-force measuring system for the US Olympic swim team's Aquatic Research Center here in town.
For his BA degree's senior project, he formulated the mathematics that described how the ideal radiation pattern of a loudspeaker in the home could be obtained, and what that "ideal dispersion pattern" should be. His work was based on all that was published about the art of recording, and of psychoacoustics. The thesis was titled "Requirements for the Design of a Time-coherent Loudspeaker with a Dispersion Pattern Decreasing Monotonically with Increasing Frequency". The Imago and Diamante emerged from this research.
He studied the "solid-state" branch of Physics- not about semiconductors only, but everything that happens outside the nucleus- all the electron-electron and electron-nucleus interactions that define materials science, and all the space/time behaviours of E-M waves, down to the quantum level. He completed all of his BA, and all but the last two courses of his MS in Physics (he hadn't taken the thesis option), as GMA took up more of his time. He says those last two courses may never happen... He still guest-lectures on occasion at Colorado College and high schools.
Roy takes whatever time is required to fully develop each design to its maximum potential. This is reflected in the choice of parts, the circuits' designs, and the enclosures- all guided by physics more than marketing. While craftsmanship and insight often produce a superior product, we couldn't do what we do without these unique drivers, circuit parts and cabinet materials.
Each of those was designed by equally talented people at the top of their professions, as it is a full-time profession just to design raw drivers- woofer, mid or tweeter. It's a profession in its own right to chemically engineer the resin in our cast marble or the wood materials in our woofer cabinets. Those engineers look to us to produce a complete, state-of-the-art system from the best parts. Our job is really best described as systems' design and integration: coherently and seamlessly blending the outputs of the world's finest drivers, mounting them in superior cabinetry. They make the best drivers- we make their drivers sound their best. From what we've seen, no speaker company can make their own drivers that compare to what driver-specialists produce, no matter what may be advertised- their measurements actually show that.
Thanks for reading this through. We hope it gave you a better understanding of what we believe it takes to be thoroughly professional in this business, and why it's important to do everything right, including making every customer happy, and each recording enjoyable.[/img]
